Last gifts have power. And when a dying Jonathan Avitia promised his best saddle to his oldest friend, Winston Hall knew there was only one way to respond.

"I told him if he did this, I was going to put it on a good horse and ride it to Wind River," Hall said, referring to the Estes Park ranch where both of them worked summers during college. "He texted back, 'That would be perfect.'"

The fact that it would require a 1,000 mile ride? Details.

On Friday evening, Hall, 32, was almost there. More than 60 days after he left his family's ranch in Gatesville, Texas, the impromptu horseman arrived at the Sleepy Teepee Ranch in Longmont, accompanied by his girlfriend Donna Chance, his 8-year-old dog, his 4-year-old horse, an RV and an awful lot of memories.

It's bittersweet, he admitted. He'd rather have back Avitia, who died of cancer in 2013. And yet, at the same time, he feels like he's gotten to explore a new reality.

"Once the dust settles, I'm going to try to figure out what's changed in me," Hall said, unwinding after a 15-mile day. "You can't help but see the world differently."

Decide to ride

Hall and Avitia grew up together in Gatesville. It was Avitia who went to school in Colorado, Avitia who persuaded Hall to come work with him at Fall River Ranch. The pair kept coming back, on-again and off-again, for the next five years.

And after Avitia died at 31, Hall — now a musician in Shreveport, Louisiana — dusted off the saddle and thought back to the promise.

"I was staring at it one day and realized I had to at least try to do it," he said. "Not doing it is the only failure."

Winston Hall, 32, rides Durango Bobwire along Weld County Road 20 on Friday morning, May 16. Hall is nearing the end of a 1,000-mile horse ride from Gatesville, Texas, to Estes Park to fulfill a promise he made to a friend who was dying of cancer. (Lewis Geyer / Longmont Times-Call)

But how to pay for it?

Taking a cue from Ben Masters, who created the documentary "Unbranded" about riding from the Canadian to the Mexican border, Hall decided to try Kickstarter. The online fundraising site required a creative work, so instead of a film, Hall decided he'd make his ride into a book.

The campaign raised $24,000. Not only that, but a horse trainer who had once worked at Wind River offered Hall a horse — Durango Bobwire (or DB), who would go to work at the ranch once the ride was over.

The fact that the saddle fit perfectly was icing on the cake.

"When we ticked over $20,000 (on Kickstarter), I looked at Donna and said, 'I guess we're going on a horse ride,'" Hall said with a smile.

On the road

From the start, the two had a decision to make. Straight lines were the fastest way to travel, but most of those straight lines had long since become major highways. Smaller roads might be more horse-friendly, but were also liable to complicate the route.

Chance and Hall decided to gamble with the big roads. It played out well, although it took DB a while to get comfortable with underpasses. Traffic to either side, he was used to. Above him, no.

The biggest highway challenge, it seemed, was that word spread fast. For example, the couple was two hours late getting into Longmont partly because well-wishers had seen Hall's picture online and kept coming over to talk.

"I'm not exaggerating — in the last three miles, people have stopped us five times," Chance said, laughing.

Weather, of course, was always a gamble. One stop in eastern Colorado saw sleet, followed by a sandstorm, followed by rain. By contrast, there always seemed to be a place to stay, even when their luck seemed to have run out.

One night in Texas, Hall said, there was no good stopping point to be found, except for an open gate on an oil lease property. Reluctantly trespassing, the two came to a hill from which they could see a beautiful sunset — and then, oddly enough, an approaching truck with a horse trailer.

"Are you Winston Hall?"

"Yes," Hall said, already laughing. "Yes, I am. Who are you?"

"My name's Ellen. I'm friends with Bob Mundy. I just came from his house."

Mundy had shoed DB before the trip began. And Ellen, who had followed the ride a bit on Facebook, was on her way to pick up and deliver a horse, but had to pull off the main road because of the bright sunset — the same sunset that had showed her Hall's silhouette on the hill.

Suddenly, they had a ride and a place to stay.

"That moment for me was the one where it felt like we couldn't do anything wrong," Hall said. "If it had been another 10 or 15 minutes, she wouldn't have seen us."

Reining in

On Sunday, the riders come to Estes and the ride comes to an end. Then it's back to the real world. But not empty-handed.

Not after spending 1,000 miles sharing his best friend and giving him a proper good-bye.

"His last chapter was not a good one," Hall said. "As his friend, this was my way of writing a last chapter for him. His name is out there in the world."

The Denver Post photography department is using GigaPan to bring documenting Colorado to a new level. Each panorama is built by assembling hundreds of photos together from a span of many minutes. If you log in with Facebook Connect you can tag yourself and your friends in some of our images using GigaTag. The detail in these images is such that you should be able to identify each friend's individual face. Note that the identities of people tagged are protected by Facebook's privacy settings, so you may not be able to see them all. Additionally, you must be logged in to Facebook Connect to see the tags.

To tag yourself:

For images with GigaTag enabled, login to Facebook Connect using the button at the lower left of each picture. Drag the large red tag over yourself or your friends and drop it to start tagging. The yellow tag represents you. Red tags are your friends, blue tags are everyone else.

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